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Inconsistent responses of soil microbial community structure and enzyme activity to nitrogen and phosphorus additions in two tropical forests

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Abstract

Aims

Soil microorganisms play an important role in biogeochemical cycles in terrestrial ecosystems. Increasing nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) deposition are likely to regulate microbial growth by altering soil nutrient availability in tropical forests, yet their impacts on microbial community structure and function between primary forests and secondary forests are not well understood.

Methods

To investigate how nutrient availability affects microbial community structure and function in tropical forests, we measured soil phospholipid fatty acids and enzyme activities in a seven-year N and P fertilization experiment in two tropical montane rainforests, China.

Results

In N addition plots, fungal biomass, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal biomass and fungi to bacteria ratio (F/B) decreased in the secondary forest, but had moderate changes in the primary forest. In P and N plus P addition plots, microbial biomass showed minor changes, but the F/B increased significantly in both forests. However, hydrolytic enzyme activities did not show a significant change in the secondary forest, while they decreased significantly in the primary forest. Microbial P limitation in the primary forest decreased under P addition and N plus P addition.

Conclusions

Our findings suggest inconsistent responses of microbial community structure and enzyme activity to N and P additions in tropical soils depending on forest type.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31988102), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2017YFC0503906) and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2018M631247). We thank Anwar Eziz, Xin Jing and Zeyuan Li for their helpful suggestions for data analyses and a friendly review of the manuscript. We also thank the anonymous reviewers and the handling editor for their constructive comments that improved this manuscript. The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Ecology, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Key Laboratory for Earth Surface Processes of the Ministry of Education, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Suhui Ma, Guoping Chen, Xiao Chen, Wen Xiao, Luhong Zhou, Jiangling Zhu, Biao Zhu & Jingyun Fang

  2. School of Geography, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS29JT, UK

    Wenguang Tang

  3. State Key Laboratory of Vegetation and Environmental Change, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100093, China

    Aijun Xing

  4. Jianfengling National Key Field Observation and Research Station for Forest Ecosystem, Research Institute of Tropical Forestry, Chinese Academy of Forestry, Guangzhou, 510520, China

    Yide Li

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  1. Suhui Ma
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  11. Jingyun Fang
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Correspondence to Jingyun Fang.

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Ma, S., Chen, G., Tang, W. et al. Inconsistent responses of soil microbial community structure and enzyme activity to nitrogen and phosphorus additions in two tropical forests. Plant Soil 460, 453–468 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-020-04805-9

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